Gojirathon 9: Kaijû sôshingeki (1968)

G: minus 21 days

Gojirathon is me just writing up some thoughts about the movies I see while I conduct my little marathon of Godzilla-movies in anticipation of the new Hollywood retooling. Why Gojirathon and not Godzillathon? Well, because Rolfe already did his Godzillathon as part of his Monster Madness, and I don’t want to steal his work. I’ll be using the terms, G, Big G, Godzilla and Gojira somewhat interchangeably… since I can be a bit lazy at times, when it comes to these things.

Destroy All Monsters! (1968)

Ahhh, that’s the spirit! Kicking off with some technobabble on how we now (in the time-period of the movies near future) do daily trips to the moon with ease and do sciency things while there. But that’s not the only place with tons of science going on.

On earth we have built a fortification around an island (yes, yet another one). And here are Godzilla, The larva of Mothra, Manda, Rodan, Anguirus, Gorosaurus (never heard of him before), Kumonga, Manda, Baragon, Varan, oh, and yes. Also Minira. But thankfully he throws no temper-tantrums in this one. And in the end King Ghidorah shows up to fight them all in one of the most unbalanced fights I have ever seen. Geez… I really felt sorry for the guy with many heads. He just had no chance at all.

The plot revolves around a new race of nefarious aliens (this time it’s from the asteroid belt between planets that is the home-land, Our solar system is kind of crowded it seems) that show up. Freeing the monsters and putting them under their own mind-control. No false pretenses. Just all out world domination from the get-go. So the monsters all go out and starts rampaging in cities. But the humans manage to foil their plans and the monsters are grumpier than ever as they go after the ones that controlled their minds. And as said before, they summon King Ghidorah who is literally stomped to death by a perfect kaijustorm of clusterf**k.

And there’s the space-ship. The world is kind of strange. They say they go to the moon daily. And the hero-spaceship is the third in it’s series. But it’s the only spaceship we ever see at all. Where are all the others? Is Japan the only space-superpower in this universe? And how can they defend all of space with only one vessel? Maybe the sequel will elaborate on that. But knowing this franchises sense of inter-movie logic it isn’t very likely.

Ok, I might sound like I thought it was just all out awesome. Though really. I was kind of getting a bit tired of how little the monsters really was involved in the plot of things. Heck, even the humans were barely fleshed out apart from their role in the organisations. At least in Monster Zero we had love-interests and stuff going on. Now it’s all pared down to the utter essentials of bridging the gaps between sporadic monster fights. And in the end. After they saved the day for all humanity. What is their thanks? Well, back into the fenced off island with all of you of course! Oh, well. At least no Minira temper tantrums.

Let’s see now what Godzillas Revenge… or All Monsters Attack! as it’s also called is all about.

Oh, and ease up with the rock-flinging. It’s hard enough to take you guys seriously without you flinging pebbles around.